To Bother With Caring
by CaptainWolfe11
Summary: A girl with a gun, a Tortugan sunset, a quiet pier, and a man who wasn't a normal pirate. One-shot. Rated T for mentions of suicide.


_**Just a little one-shot in response to a prompt. Never wrote a Pirates fic before so I decided to be spontaneous! Enjoy!**_

 _ **Disclaimer: I only own Arabella and The Shahryar!**_

No one missed the shifty glances of the dock worker, and most followed his gaze to the pier, the one where no ship was moored. Something else was moored there instead. She was small. Not really a woman, but not a child. Her legs swung over the edge and swirled in the brine.

The crew shambled by the worker, thoughts on drinks and whores. What was another street rat on the docks? Gibbs, however, stopped by the man and leaned towards him, squinting at the girl. "What's wrong with her?" He gruffed, absently taking a swig from his flask.

At first, the dock man looked as if he wasn't going to reply, but then he quickly leaned in, grease-filled mustache twitching. "The lit'le wench keeps puttin' her gun ta her 'ead, then takin' it down. Wish she'd make up 'er mind already. Makin' us all nervous, she is." Then, as if he'd never said a word, he pushed past Gibbs with his broom, moving much too fast to actually be affecting the grime-soaked planks.

Gibbs frowned, sucked in a corner of his mouth, then shrugged, turning to follow the rest of the men into the depths of Tortuga.

"Don't wait up for me, mate." Came a voice, quiet-like. The first mate stopped in his tracks, sighing inwardly. He didn't even turn back around to reply to his captain. "Aye." Why couldn't the man ever seem to act like a _normal_ pirate? Oh well, he could just drink that question away tonight, too.

The unusual silence of the dock seemed to frame the night well. From over their shoulders the crashes and laughter of Tortuga wafted out to them, but it seemed to die the closer one stepped to the water's edge.

She was small indeed. How old could she even be? Fifteen? Sixteen? Short black hair was ragged at the ends, probably where it'd been cut by a dull knife. As one approached, the long-barreled pistol could be seen resting in her hands, so far, limp.

"Ello, love. Such a nice night to be admiring the sunset. I 'ope you won' mind if I rest me legs 'ere with ya." Captain Jack Sparrow plunked down onto the pier next to the girl, pulling off his boots and waggling his toes in the water.

The girl cringed as he sat down, mouth open as if in reply. She watched silently as he set his boots behind them, unable to get the words of her mind out into the open air. Finally, as she glanced down into the water, at both pairs of their feet murky underneath the ripples, she murmured, "I'd rather you didn't."

He turned to her, eyes narrowing. "Well, I'd rather that I did." Ever so briefly, his eyes flickered to the gun in her hands.

She frowned, honestly confused. This man hadn't seemed overly surprised to see what was in her hands. She'd first thought he was here to try and get services from her, so to speak. Maybe he still was, maybe it really was only now that he'd seen the gun. "Why are you here?" She asked. Her voice was so low it almost got caught in the sound of the lapping waves.

This time, he gave a not so subtle look towards her gun. "Man says you can't make up ye mind."

She blinked, gripping the gun ever tighter in her hands. "Why do you care what he says?" She murmured, louder than before. This man was obviously a vagrant, a pirate. Just like almost everyone on this rock. Why was he bothering her? Most people here would pay to see a little blood.

He raised a brow and laid back on the dock, arms folded under his head. "'Tis always regrettable, my dear, when a fine thing is destroyed. An' a man such as meself knows wha' a treasure is."

The girl clenched her jaw at his words, turning from him and back towards the horizon. "I'm not a treasure."

He popped up, and she jumped at the speed at which his head appeared next to hers, the ornaments in his hair jangling. He held up a finger, which wavered in the air before landing on her shoulder. "Wrong."

She blinked. For a moment it was as if the word had actually jumped the air between them and made it to her, but then she frowned, a deep scowl. "Who are you?" She growled. "You don't know me. How can you say anything about me?" She looked to the gun, then to the horizon, the brief fire gone from her eyes.

Jack paused, then dipped his face even further into her space, a sort of grin pulling at his lips. "I'm Captain Jack Sparrow, love."

At first she recoiled from him, but then she blinked, turning to look at the huge ship docked a ways from them. The one with the blackened hull and inky sails. "And that's your ship?" She asked, voice wavering.

"The _Black Pearl_." Jack purred, making eyes at his beauty. "The fastest ship in the Caribbean."

The girl looked at it for a long moment, eyes drifting over the long, graceful curves, over the length of the charred angel reaching forward from the prow. "She's beautiful." She breathed, voice catching somewhere along the way. She let out a shaky breath and lifted the gun a few inches from where it lay on her leg.

Sparrow's eyes snapped to the motion. "What's your name, lass?" He asked suddenly, leaning forward again, smiling with all the charm he could muster.

She didn't even lift her eyes from the gun to observe the smile he'd concocted for her. Instead, her brow furrowed, skin curling around her eyes like waves on a previously calm sea. The action pushed a tear from her wet eye, and it rolled silently down her cheek. After some tension had gathered, she whispered, "Arabella."

"Arabella." He said to the air. "Arabella, Arabella…" He paused, eyes narrowing, as if to taste the name. "That's a good name." He said at last. "Did you know," he began causally, "that 'bella' means beautiful in…" He blinked, then waved a hand, "somewhere."

"Of course I know that." She hissed suddenly, turning to face him fully, teeth bared. The setting Caribbean sun highlighted the wet stains on her cheeks. "Father used to tell me incessantly." Her jaw quavered, and she let out a puff of air, the beginnings of a sob, and turned her head stiffly back towards the horizon. Clearly, that had _not_ been the right thing to say.

After a long moment, her stiff jaw relaxed enough for her to bark once more, "Why are you here, _pirate_?" The word rolled poisonously off of her tongue. "Just here to fix me up and pat me on the back so that you can have someone to bed tonight?" Her dark eyelashes trembled as her words grew more fierce, and the tears rolled freely now. "Why else would you care? A good man wouldn't have anything to gain from me living, and a man like you has only one." Her hand tightened on the gun's handle. "I'm just a girl stranded on this god-forsaken spit of land without a ship to her name, nor anyone to bother with caring." Teeth bared against her trembling, she squeezed the final words from her throat. "Well, _I'm_ done caring too." In an instant the gun was cocked, barrel in her open mouth, her eyes squeezed shut.

"No, no, no no no, love!" Gasped the Captain, hands waving frantically about Arabella, but not one finger daring to touch her. "Please, love." He begged, almost not daring to breath, as if one loud sound would startle the trigger and split the night air with a shot.

Arabella's hand quivered, and her eyes were still shut tight against the world. A tear peaked through the cracks and trembled on an eyelash.

"Let's talk it out, eh? You tell me what's got you bothered, an' I'll do the listenin' with me ears. An' if we cannae get it sorted, _then_ you can blow all ye brains out on the docks, savvy?"

She suddenly jerked, and Jack flinched, waiting for the sound and the spray of blood. Instead of firing, she had yanked the gun from her mouth and curled over herself, hands hugging her sides, voice thick with sobs. The tension in the air cracked open and fizzled.

"I can't even pull a bloody trigger." She choked, hair spilling from her shoulders to frame her face. Every bone in her body shook, with her tears and with the cold.

The sun had finally sank beneath the waves, throwing the sky into hues of green and silver.

The distant sounds of Tortuga began to penetrate their isolation. Laughter and screams and the sound of breaking glass drifted over to them, like whispers. That, and the sound of her weeping, were like the horizon dripping it's dusk and melancholy over their heads.

Jack floundered, hand floating in the general vicinity of Arabella, but not knowing quite what to do with itself. He winced as he placed it around her shoulder, waiting for her to snap once more, but she only sobbed louder. To his great surprise, she rested her head on his side. Not a moment before, she had accused him of philandering, and now she was knowingly saddled against him?

Perhaps _not_ knowingly. Moments before the girl has stared death in the face and almost shook his hand. He knew what that was like, and it wasn't an easy feeling. Perhaps it was so traumatizing that she could even forget that she was being held by a pirate. With a pang, he felt the tug of fabric as one of her hands clutched the folds of his shirt, and her whole body shuddered. She was like a web of a human, hollow and broken, and he felt that fragility, not daring to move or even to speak.

The night sky grew darker and darker, the chill more bitter, the stars brighter. Her sobs eventually slowed, becoming only occasional shudders, and sniffs, but she didn't move, didn't shove him into the ocean in distaste. Something twitched in his hand, and he looked down to see that it was her gun. With her shaky hand, she was pressing it into his. He grasped it, and pulled it slowly from her grip, feeling a little lighter when she no longer touched it at all.

"It was my ship." She murmured, straightening up finally, looking slightly ashamed. His hand fell away from her shoulder. It was as if a fragile thing had taped itself back together. It wasn't going to fall apart, but it wasn't solid, either. "When my father died, the company was going to take it. But he left it to me. So we stole it, me an my friends." She sniffed, wiping some of the wetness from her face. "Cept they wanted to pillage and burn and reap, an all I wanted to do was explore."

He knew what was coming next, of course. But she was talking, not crying, and he wanted to keep it that way. The cool breeze that ran along the water drifted up to meet them, too, and it played with their obsidian hair, sending it up in intervals. "They all mutually decided that the best thing would be to leave me here, and take her with them." _Her._ The ship. Arabella squinted, even though the sun's glare had long since abated. "Maybe they didn't know what they were doing to me, but that ship was _all_ I had in the _world_ , and the only thing I had left of my father." The breath she took was long and slow, and when she turned to look at him, her face was carefully blank. "I don't feel like crying anymore, but I don't feel like living, either. Tell me, Captain. Why should I?"

Suddenly the girl before him was as still as glass, calm as a forbidding ocean, old as a coral reef. And she was asking _him_ that?

He regarded her with eyes thick with fog. "Maybe you shouldn't. An' maybe, neither should I." He smiled and opened his eyes wide, leaning in to whisper to her. "We're all just little bugs scurrying around, waiting to die, trying des'prate-like to live a little before they get squashed."

She blinked, a furrow beginning to appear on her brow. He smiled even wider, throwing an arm once more around her shoulders. "But lass," he breathed, gesturing out towards the open ocean. "We live for _that_. The ocean an' her waves. Freedom."

Arabella shook her head. "Right, but I don't have that anymore."

Once again, with a finger, he tapped her shoulder. "Wrong." His drunken grin sent her to suspicion.

"What d'you mean?" Her ship was gone, her friends deserted…

"Come wif' me!" He said excitedly, waving his hands about. "You wouldn't have to pillage 'n reap 'n be all pirate-y. Y'could be a scrub the deck." His eyes widened and his hands gestured out like spiders towards her. "Better yet, y'could be the cook!"

She frowned. "The cook?"

"Now, I know, it ain't exactly like bein' a captain…"

"You're right there…" She breathed, lip twitching.

He went on as though her interruption had never happened. "But who's ta say that we'd never run into your friends again, eh? Maybe, we could take back your ship!"

The _Shahryar_ …hers again. But she'd never wanted to be a pirate. The yells and shouts of Tortuga once again pushed back into their conversation, and she sighed. Who was she kidding? She was stuck here of all places, how else could she live? She'd have to take a job _sometime_. And when she was starving in the street, what jobs would be available to her?

She shrugged. "I don't know, I'll have to think about it." She murmured, feeling the weight drip off of her chest a little. It ached. It ached to be apart from her ship. It stung to remember the faces of her crew sailing away, stealing from her the one thing she loved more than anything else.

But the call of the ocean, the gentle lapping of the waves, which she hadn't been able to hear before now, came back to her, soothed her, helped her feel the pain. She struggled upwards, wincing at the protest of her joints. "But it wouldn't hurt to buy me a drink."

In an instant, Jack was up, boots shoved back on his feet. He leaned in, wobbling a little. "Now you're making perfect sense." He set off down the dock, hands swinging jauntily at his sides. "Come along, me lit'le treasure. The tavern awaits!"

It was hardly worth asking which tavern, nearly every building in Tortuga professed to be one. Arabella glanced down at the pier, where she had sat moments before. Oh, she still thought it would be nice to be dead, to not have to worry about the dull ache around her heart…but she no longer ached to pull the trigger. No, she wanted to be dead, but she didn't want to die.

She sighed, and turned to follow the captain towards the city. Who knows if she'd actually take up his offer, but a few bottles of rum wouldn't hurt, either.


End file.
